Sheryl Leach

Sheryl Leach (born 1952) is an American author and former elementary school teacher who created the children's television character Barney together with Kathy Parker and Dennis DeShazer. She studied elementary education at Southern Methodist University and bilingual education at Texas A&M University-Commerce. In the late 1980s, thinking about the lack of videos that could hold the attention of her young son, she and her partners developed the idea of a purple dinosaur and sold a series of home videos called Barney and the Backyard Gang directly to the public. After a Connecticut Public Television employee rented one of the videos for his daughter and spoke with the creators, production began in October 1991 on the television series Barney & Friends, which premiered on PBS in April 1992. Leach served as an executive producer of the series until 1998, returned in 2001 to consult on later seasons, and was nominated twice for Daytime Emmy Awards.